Chapter Seven

Felix

Prior to Darien’s arrival today, I’d convinced myself that my plans for him were ridiculous. Ridiculous, selfish, and about a hundred other negative adjectives that all reflected on me badly. I’d been all set to answer his questions and then let him go on his merry way. And then he’d had to make that crack about me being lucky.

Lucky! There were a thousand things you could say about me I might have admitted to. Arrogance. Selfishness. A chip on my shoulder a mile wide. But I wasn’t accepting being lucky as one of them. Lucky people didn’t go to prison for something they’d hadn’t done, and him not even entertaining the idea that I could be telling the truth burned like someone had dangled me in the pits of hell.

The minute I’d got in his face, base instincts had taken over. Even then, I hadn’t known how far I’d push it. Any sign of fear, of him not being into it, and I would have backed off. I was many things, but I wasn’t a rapist. But all I was getting from Darien was arousal, his bare chest rising and falling rapidly, and a hardness that made my mouth water tenting the front of his suit trousers. Yeah, Mr. I prefer women really wasn’t doing a good job of convincing me of that fact.

As for his plea that he could lose his job, it didn’t concern me. Because I wouldn’t be reporting him, and he presumably wouldn’t be telling anyone, so how would they know? Which left nothing but pleasure to be gained from this encounter.

Yeah, whether it was a good idea or the worst idea in the world, this was happening. I was past caring, my arousal demanding I do something about it. Extracting my hands from Darien’s shirt, I pushed his thighs apart so I could fit myself between them, the change in position meaning I could get closer. With that obstacle out of the way, I lowered my lips to Darien’s neck, his sharp intake of breath as I tasted him making me smile.

“Salt,” I said. “Salt, musk, and a hint of cologne.”

“Don’t.” The word was meaningless when Darien had arched his neck to give me easier access. He wanted this. I wanted this. And I was going to take it. I followed the line of his neck until it met his jaw, a slight stubble meeting my lips as I mouthed my way along it. Would he let me kiss him? Or is that where he’d draw the line? There was a simple way to find out, my lips moving those last few inches to meet his.

A moment of hesitation, and then he was kissing me back. That was the point at which Darien gave up, any hint of him not being on board with what we were doing, melting away. Our kisses were chaste at first—close-mouthed and exploratory. I needed more, grabbing his hair and tilting his head until he conceded access, everything becoming hotter and wetter and far more satisfying as our tongues did a tango.

There might have been an element of sexual activity in prison. A snatched hand job. A hasty blow job. The odd fuck if you were really lucky, but there’d been no kissing. So I made the most of it, luxuriating in it and celebrating all the possibilities of what it could lead to. I’d always enjoyed kissing. It had never been a prelude to what came next for me. Back in the early days of our relationship, Julian had teased me about it. In later years, his comments had been more cutting, more designed to wound—like calling me a girl. Darien didn’t seem to mind, though.

The position we were in was awkward—for me, at least—with me still bent over him. Did I dare risk breaking the spell to change it? If I didn’t want to end up needing a chiropractor, I had little choice.

Still kissing him, I pulled him from the armchair. If I was clever enough about it, he wouldn’t even realize what was happening. The sofa was only a few steps away, but with my mouth glued to his, it was an expedition. Circumstances forced me to stop kissing him as I fell back on the sofa and pulled him down to straddle me. It gave him a lot of power. The power to bring a stop to this, to climb off me, and walk to the front door.

I stared up at him while his expression said he’d reached the same conclusion. With his shirt hanging open, his hair mussed, and his lips swollen from kissing, he looked nothing like the man who’d sat so primly asking me questions only a few minutes ago. I liked this Darien more. A lot more. And if he tried to leave, I wasn’t altogether sure I wouldn’t rugby tackle him to the carpet and take that decision away. Hoping it wouldn’t come to that, I tried for an entreaty instead. “Kiss me.”

“I…” Nothing more, his pulse fluttering rapidly in his neck.

“Kiss me,” I said, demanding this time rather than asking nicely. “I’m so fucking hard. You’d have to be a monster to leave me like this.”

That seemed to do the trick, Darien dropping forward and the kissing beginning again in earnest. My hands weren’t idle this time, pushing his jacket off his shoulders and then untucking his shirt from the waistband of his trousers so I could trace the bumps of his spine. I ground against his arse while we kissed, my cock hard enough that I worried that if I kept doing it, I risked coming in my jeans and embarrassing myself.

When Darien’s hands delved beneath my T-shirt, I assisted him in pulling it over my head and discarding it. Darien’s heated gaze as it roved over my chest made every single pull-up, every single press-up, every single sit-up I’d done in prison more than worth it.

I moved my hand to his crotch to palm him through his trousers. Darien’s moaned response had me rubbing him harder through the fabric to elicit more from him, like I was a twisted conductor and he was my orchestra. When that was no longer enough, I unfastened the button of his trousers and undid his zipper, slipping my hand into his underwear to pull his cock out. And what an impressive cock it was. Not in size, but in beauty. Darien’s cock in my hand had him panting. “Please,” he said, with his forehead pushed against mine.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to make you come. I’m going to make both of us come.” My jeans were a little harder to unzip, especially with Darien’s weight pinning me down, but there was no way I wouldn’t succeed. Darien finally got with the program, lifting so I could push my jeans and underwear down to mid-thigh. With no lube to hand, and zero intentions of bringing this to a temporary halt to find some, I settled for spit. Finally, though, I had my fist wrapped around both our cocks, Darien’s head resting on my shoulder as I found a rhythm that worked for both of us.

He had a way of letting out tiny little whimpers that made it hard not to come. I wouldn’t, though, not before he did. He could accuse me of many things, but he wouldn’t get to say I was a terrible lover. His cock felt perfect in my hand: tight and hot, pre-cum already smearing the head and helping with the lubrication as I pumped him.

Teeth fastened around my shoulder as Darien grew close. He could have broken the skin and I would have kept going, nothing mattering but getting to see him fall apart. When it happened, it was as beautiful as I’d expected, Darien holding nothing back as he let out a keening wail, his handsome face contorting and hot cum covering my fingers to make everything deliciously slippery as I kept pumping. There was no watching a sight like that and not coming myself, pleasure surging through my body as my cum mixed with his.

Then the only sound in the room was ragged pants, both of us wrecked. I’d automatically wrapped my arms around Darien to hold him to me, bare skin pressed against bare skin, rapid heartbeat to rapid heartbeat. “Now that’s a meeting,” I said, amusement seeping into my words. “You give the best service.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t land right. I knew that as soon as he went stiff in my arms. When he struggled free, I let him. I could hardly keep him there against his will, no matter how good it might feel to have another person close, to have Darien close.

He spied a box of tissues once he was on his feet, my mother keeping them in an old-fashioned white silk box decorated with pink flowers. He plucked out a big wad and scrubbed at his cum-soaked abdomen with a fastidiousness the task didn’t warrant when it was cum, not radioactive waste. His head was down, so I couldn’t see his expression. I didn’t need to, though, his agitation written in every hard line of his body. Look up regret in the dictionary and there would be a picture of Darien by it. It was understandable. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by it.

“It’s not funny,” he eventually ground out as he threw the tissues into a bin. “And I don’t appreciate you laughing at me. ”

“Laughing at you?” Following his cue, I tugged my jeans and underwear back up, deciding that sitting here with my cock hanging out perhaps wasn’t the best way of dealing with his antagonism. “I wasn’t laughing at you.” I would never laugh at you.

Where had that thought come from? It was way too soon for soppy sentiments to come to the fore. Besides, after Julian, I wasn’t sure I’d ever trust another man. Sex might be on the menu, but anything more than that, no thank you. That’s what made Darien a perfect person to mess around with. Well, that and his good looks and tight body.

Darien was attempting to rectify his state of undress. He’d fastened his shirt and retrieved his tie from the floor, but in his agitation was struggling to knot it correctly. “Come here,” I offered.

No surprise that he didn’t do what I asked. I grabbed him, pulling him in front of me so I could inspect him. He tried to fend me off, but I kept a tight hold. “Shhh… I’m helping. Let me.”

He might have fastened his shirt, but in his haste he’d missed a button. There was nothing I could do about my fingers being slightly sticky as I undid them and then buttoned them correctly before reversing my earlier actions to tuck it back into his trousers. Then I took the tie off him, our gazes meeting as I lifted his collar and wound it around his neck.

His eyes were whirlpools of emotion as he stared back at me. “I promise I won’t tell a soul about what just happened between us. I’ll take that secret to my grave if I need to.”

Darien’s lips quirked slightly in the first shred of amusement I’d seen from him in some time. “Bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

A few deft movements of my fingers and I had the tie knotted. I tightened it, making sure it was straight as I worked the knot up to his neck before pulling his collar over it. “ I’m being melodramatic! You were the one acting like the moment your cock came out, your time as a probation officer was over. I’m just pointing out that nothing has changed just because you got off.”

“And I’m just supposed to trust you, am I?”

The doubt in Darien’s words made me remember who I was. Something about letting go had temporarily lifted the burden of being an ex-criminal who’d spent seven years in prison. “Yeah, you are.” I held his gaze without blinking. “Because I mean it. No one will hear what happened from me. And I mean no one. Who am I going to tell, my mother?”

The words didn’t have the desired effect, abject horror appearing on Darien’s face. “Oh my God, your mother. What if she’d walked in on us?” He swallowed, the action seeming to take some effort. “You didn’t think of that, did you?”

“Actually,” I offered, my voice calm. “I did. She’s away until tomorrow, so there was no chance of her arriving home.” I retrieved Darien’s jacket from the floor and helped him into it, smoothing the fabric over his shoulders as an excuse to touch him more, which was bizarre really when only a few minutes ago I’d had his cock in my hand. “I don’t suppose you’d stay for a cup of tea?” It sounded so provincial after sharing sweat and cum, but that didn’t stop me from making the offer in my reluctance to find myself alone again. There was only so long you could rattle around a house without going crazy.

Darien shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Because you have somewhere else to be, or because you’re dead set on escaping as soon as you can?” I laughed as indecision flashed across his face. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you answer that.” I watched as he gathered up his papers and stuffed them back into his briefcase, and then followed him to the front door, stopping him before he could open it. “Wait. ”

His sharp intake of breath as I crowded him against the wall fed my ego. Darien just having come seemed to make no difference to the effect I could have on him. I reached up slowly and smoothed his hair down. “You look like someone has dragged you through a hedge backwards. I’d hate for someone to take one look at you and think, now there’s a man who’s just had a good orgasm.” Darien’s lack of response except for a blink had me preening inwardly. It pleased me to throw him off balance, and had done since our first meeting. It was the reason I’d known that the attraction unfurling in my gut was mutual.

I cupped his cheeks and took the liberty of leaning forward to drop a soft kiss on his lips. “Just so we’re clear, I’d like what happened today to happen again. More, hopefully.” I let my gaze slide down his body to his crotch. “Next time I’ll blow you. Make you see stars.”

“There won’t be a next time. This was a one-off.”

His words might have been convincing if he hadn’t accepted the kiss like it was his due. I moved closer. So close I could feel his body heat. “There will be.”

“Not if I pass you off to someone else. That way, I never have to see you again.”

“I have an inkling that if you could pass me off to someone else, you’d already have done it. There are how many PO’s in your office? Four? Five? I’m guessing Katherine being out of play already makes it more difficult, and I’d bet you weren’t Katherine’s first choice.”

Darien’s expression said I’d hit the nail on the head, but that he wouldn’t admit it. I let go of him and stepped back, waving a hand at the front door only a meter away. “Safe journey home. I’ll see you soon.”

He left without saying anything else and I watched him through the window. This time Darien didn’t linger in the car. Anyone would have thought he was in a rush to get out of here. That didn’t dampen my euphoria, though. I actually felt good for the first time in an age. Darien Quinn would be the perfect distraction from how shitty my life was.